Perfection is but a dream
Twilight's eyes slowly open as her clock turns to one. She looks out the window and sees the darkness of night. "Not again." She says out loud, Spike not being around. Spike left for the week to go to Canterlot on behalf of Twilight. She was dealing with a situation in Ponyville that wouldn't allow her to leave, but it was taken care of faster than expected. She now has the week to herself, other than her friends.
"This is the third time this week, can't I just sleep!?" She yells now, frustrated. Three times this week she has waken up during the middle of the night, mainly due to her being restless. She is bored. Nothing is going wrong, nothing is needing fixing, and nothing is at danger of not working. She would try to make an issue, but learned her lesson last time she tried anything like that. Big Mac probably still has Smarty Pants.
She gets up and walks around, trying to tire her self out. After half an hour of walking it becomes clear that this is only waking her up more. She lets out a sigh and walks throughout the castle, looking for anything that might help her sleep. She passes a mirror and glances at herself. She goes to walk past it but stops and looks at herself, thinking out loud. "I've done so much for so many, but now what? I mean, there is always someone that needs help, why won't they come to me? Is there something wrong with me?" She continues staring at herself, wondering why she isn't needed.
"Maybe, maybe it's because I'm not good enough? No, I've proven myself enough, they probably just don't need help. The world is probably perfect, no one needs anything." She smiles at herself but let's it go. "Who am I kidding? Someone, somewhere needs something and they all know that they can come to me, so why don't they?" She notices the look of her wings. They're different form most Pegasuses, even slightly different from the other princesses. Why? Moving her eyes to her face she notices her eyes, how tired they look even though she can't sleep. More and more issues pop up as she looks at herself, and she grows more and more frustrated. Then she thinks about her image mentally. She is a princess, and because of that she may seem unreachable. She had a fight to the death with Tirek, and that could have made her seem harder than she is. More experiences force their way into her mind and she gives up.
"I'm just, I'm an awful pony. How have I gotten to where I am? I'm no good, I need to fix this, I need to be better for the sake of others, I need my book." She runs off to her room and grabs her notebook. It is filled with science, experiments, numbers and nonsense. She runs through the castle and reaches the basement door. If there's one thing that survived Tirek's blast, it was the basement. And it's even better than before.
She begins to write in a new page in her note book. Log 41, experiment Imperfection, trial A. I have priced my flaws and have decided to attempt to rid myself of these imperfections. This will require electrical volts over fifty watts, twenty test tubes and an experimental product dubbed The Coupled Atom, or TCA for short.. This deceive will make an immediate copy of myself and show me what I'll look like without the imperfections. The copy will not be alive so it will be disposed of while in the tube." The Coupled Atom is a machine that reaches from one end of the fairly large basement to the mechanical, automatic door on the other side of the room.
Beginning trial A, now. She writes down the time and enters the first of the two tubes of TCA. She attaches two of three electrical cords that hang from the top of the tube to her either of her wings and adjusts the watts, volts and other specifics. She hits a button from the inside of the tube and the door slides closed. A humming whirl stirs the air and a fast shock sets off through the wires. Twilight jerks and falls over, smoke coming from her wings. The door slides open and she detaches the chords, stumbles out and sets herself upright. A shadow through the second tube forms. She levitates her journal over and writes down the results.
The wings have not changed. Trial A has failed. I will be adding metallic ear clips to my right ear to increase the effectiveness of the electricity. Trial B starts now. She hits a button and the shadow in the second tube dissolves. Again writing down the time she steps into the tube and attaches the same two cords to her wings and the third that hangs from the ceiling to her right ear. A quick shock shakes her and causes her to pass out. She wakes up and opens the door. Looking at the time she was out for just over an hour.
Looking at the second shadow forming in the tube, the figure has the same three metallic rings around its ears. The three rings should not have copied over in TCA, but they managed to anyway. I'm not sure what caused this phenomenon, but I will keep an eye on it. She puts down the quill and stares at the figure, thinking. She then gets an idea. If I were to create a shock large enough to change the way I think, and make me more relatable to others, then they'd be able to go to me whenever they need to as they'd be more comfterable with me. In order to do this however, I'll need more metal braces on spots of my body that aren't sensitive enough to paralyze me, but are powerful enough to be effective.
She runs into the other room and past the mechanical door to find scrap metal. Creating a number of braces and rings, she creates two braces for her back-right leg, a ring to go around her horn, and a panel to wrap around the underside of her stomach. If these components do get copied onto the form in the second tube, then we will know for sure how this system works. The atoms would be duplicated, regardless if they are in me, or part of the metal. Beginning Trial C, now. After once again writing the time, she steps into the tube. She connects all the cables as before, however this time also adding two of the three cables on the floor to her metal braces on her leg.
The ring around her horn is meant to act as a conductor. If this trial is a success, then the ring should conduct electricity and focus it to her horn. This, in theory, should make her future spells more powerful than before. She presses the button and the door begins to close, but a hoof shoots out and stops it. "Oh Celestia!" Twilight cries in horror. It's the clone from the last trial which never dissolved. "B-but you were non-sentient, I don't-"
"Shut up!" The clone slaps Twilight across the face and pulls her out of the tube while detaching the cables, and takes the journal and puts it between the door and wall that the door was about to close on. The clone takes all of the braces and rings off of Twiliight and throws her into the emptied tank, then closing the door. The second tube is made of a material that does not allow for magic to be used, it was a precaution Twilight took just in case any clone ever did come alive. However, when Twilight reached to press the button that would dissolve the clone, she accidentally hit the emergency release that was right next to it. The clone puts on all of the braces and the ring, as well as having developed wires that connect its spinal cord to its sides. After getting prepped, it steps into the first tube.
Attaching all of the cables as Twilight had, the clone attaches the third, and final, cable. It puts it against its front right leg, hoping it'll stay. It kicks the journal out of the way and the door slams shut. All at once the electricity overloads the system and nearly catches fire, burning part the artificial fur around the clone's eye and making it black. After the door opens the clone steps out, smiling. It ignores the wires and while most simply plop off, the one attached to its front right leg snaps. Looking at its leg It shows a mixture of flesh and robotic parts that have become visible due to the fur and artificial skin burning off. The same is said for its tail, where at the base of it is the same situation.
After patching the two spots up with gauze, it looks into the second tube. Twilight is floating in water, looking just like one of the other shadows. She could be passed out, knocked out, dead, it doesn't matter to the clone. All it knows is it is now the true Twilight Sparkel. The clone presses the button to dissolve the pony in the second tube, and it does just that. It picks up the journal and reads a quick passage out loud. "If the forms in the second tube ever do come alive, then it will be the combination of the shadows that have dissolved over the course of each trial. Dissolving each shadow does not simply erase it, it only breaks it down and keeps it in a reserve port below the tube."
"So, she isnt dead, she's simply in reserve." The clone says to itself. "Fair enough." It takes one last look at the room, then heads upstairs. Looking through a window it can see that the sun is just starting to rise. Moving further it notices itself in a mirror just outside of the bedroom. The clone seems to have all the same memories as the real Twilight Sparkle. It sees two marks; one just under her eye that is burnt, and one that is on her front right leg where the wire is. Each Mark is in the shape of circuitry and computer-related instruments.
A knock echoes through out the house, originating from the front door. The clone smirks. "Let's see how powerful my magic really is."
